I was at this forum in Philly and it was a powerful discussion about young people and the new world of media and technology. It is worth viewing and sharing.
I am ready to leave Conference City behind … but when I get home, I am right back into another literacy conference at my school. Oh well. This morning, we had a standing room-only crowd for our presentation at NCTE on Assigning and Assessing Digital Writing. There were about 100 people in the audience and they seemed to get a lot out of the conversations we had, which spring from our book Teaching the New Writing (and the publisher told us that they are about to head into the second printing of the book, which is very cool because that means people are using it as a resource).
My part of the presentation centered on a digital science picture book project with my students. I am embedding my prezi presentation here but you can also view resources and materials from our presentation at a Google Sites that we set up, instead of killing trees with too many handouts.
One thing we did was to have the audience view both the science book and listen to Dawn Reed’s students’ podcasts and come up with criteria for evaluating some digital media. Then, we looked at a third piece and tried to make sense of it based on some of that criteria. Our hope is that the process of coming up with ways to examine a piece of digital work from an assessment angle will help teachers.
From that session, we wandered over to the Teachers College Press booth to sign some books but no one asked me to sign their book there, so we just stood around, blocking traffic. I tried to grab some good book swag but I couldn’t find much. Where did all the free crap go?
Later, I did one of the NCTE Tech to Go sessions. My focus was on using webcomics and I had a nice little crowd. I showed them some options, some student samples and then had a few folks working on creating their own comics at the kiosk (Thanks, Stacey and Ruth!). It was a bit of a strange situation, with me standing there chatting with a computer monitor and folks just milling about. But I think I sparked some interest in a few teachers to try out a few sites.
Here is the Comic website that I created as a resource for folks. Use it and share it as you wish.
I have heard about Prezi from a few folks and even ventured to the site once or twice, but I could not wrap my head around it. You know how it is: you have a concept of something (ie, presentations use powerpoint, which are a formal sequence of slides moving forward) and it is difficult to shake loose. Just imagine when we are old and senile!
But here in Philly, I noticed a few people using Prezi and I thought: what the heck is that! And, that spurred me to want to spend a bit more time figuring it out. So I did.
Prezi is a free presentation tool (you can upgrade for a free) that shifts away from slides and moves content onto a large virtual canvas, where you layer in text and images and other media and then create a path through the material. The picture I am including here is a simple Prezi I did for my Day in a Sentence, showing the grid and the paths between my words. You can choose different themes, although the choices are limited (I wonder if more choices come when you pay for an upgraded account?).
Once I “got it,” I became hooked, and I decided that since life is all about learning and trying new things, I would delve right in. So, I took my somewhat-boring (I can admit it) powerpoint of a presentation I am giving on Saturday at NCTE around assigning and assessing digital work by students (ie, my digital science picture book project) and created a Prezi of it instead. And I will use that on Saturday and hopefully, I’ll weave this adventure into that talk, too.
What if there is no internet connection, you ask? Good question. Prezi allows you to download a copy as a flash file and share your presentation that way. You can also embed your prezi in blogs. Here is my Day in a Sentence (which is hosted this week over at Lynn’s blog — Reduction Physics — so come join us).
My larger question: How could students use this format to create a different kind of narrative, never mind a presentation. What would it mean to be shifting through a story over a large canvas of information? How would you plan that out and then do it? (if you have examples of students doing this, please share).
Paul B. has set up an interesting Google Slideshow and is seeking collaborators. The question: What experience do you provide for your students and what experience do you hope they get? Paul hopes you add an image and a sentence that captures your insight.
Here is my addition, which I created over at ToonDoo:
But you can add your own or at least, see what others are adding:
Take a word. Toss it into this Williams Words generator. Out comes a visual poem. Of sorts. Here is mine, using the word “composing” as the generator text. I am even going to say, this is one of my 30Poems 30Days poems, as a way to honor the non-traditional poet.
But you should, particularly if you are interested in the ways that writing can use technology wisely with students in their role as composers with digital media. In this book, Troy lays out an entire realm of digital tools that are out there than can support and enhance the teaching of writing. He also touches on such ideas as Choice and Inquiry, Conferencing with students, publishing student work to a world audience, and assessing such digital work (always a tricky endeavor in my opinion).
In his opening statement, Troy wisely lays out the rationale for his work:
I argue here and throughout this book that if we engage students in real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that it complements their innate need to find purposes and audiences for their work, we can have them engaged in a digital writing process that focuses first on the writer, then on the writing, and lastly on the technology. (p.8)
Troy grounds his work in the foundations of the Writing Process movement — where the focus is on the writer’s exploration — but examines the potential of technology for students. Wikis can be collaborative publishing spaces, collaborative word processors (like Google Docs) can show revision history, podcasting gives students a voice to the world, digital storytelling as a way to merge writing with image and more.
Troy also provides plenty of information, such as his chart that shows the traits of effective and ineffective digital writers. He also wisely lays out the various technology and projects along a spectrum called MAPS: Mode, Media, Audience, Purpose, and Situation for the writer.
If you are a teacher interested in moving towards the digital writing world with your students, this is the book to get. Troy has made a useful and engaging book about the transformation going on in some classrooms, but not enough. I will be keeping this book on my desk at school and sharing it with colleagues when I can. You should, too.
This comes via Gary Haye’s blog (which I came across from a friend in the National Writing Project, who came across it via Will Richardson …) and it is fascinating to watch:
I saw a contest in my RSS called Six Sounds in Search of an Author and followed the link to the ISTE site and was intrigued.
The task: take the six sound clips and create a podcast story of some sort. The whole thing can’t be more than a minute long. Interesting, for sure. I began by looking at what the sounds were, and then listening, and then trying to make connections between them.
The story came to me quickly — a person trapped in a cave — and composed this story. I then recorded it in Audacity– mixing in the sound clips – and sent it in. I like it.
I imagine you could easily bring this kind of contest into the classroom, given enough time. The art of constructing a sound story is amazingly complex thinking — from planning, to writing, to production. And of course, this is the whole idea of the contest — trying out something yourself and thinking in terms of classroom practice.
I finally had time to check out the Domo Animate site, which allows a user to easily (yes, it is easy to use) create animated comics, which can then be shared or embedded into other sites. It’s free (always a plus) and great fun. I haven’t thought too deep about how to use it for the classroom (I am stymied again by email registrations, since my school does not have email for students).
This afternoon, a group of teachers at my school will convene the first Community of Practice (CoP) for technology. This is an interesting development, I think, and one I certainly welcome as we move further into technology integration. We have three computer carts (two PCs and one Mac), a handful of Interactive Boards, and assorted other stuff floating around the building.
Since last year, our school has moved into regular team meetings — first, it was known as Professional Learning Communities and now it is Communities of Practice (I see a Boolean comic coming …). Whatever we call it, this networking is important to us, even as we work as a school to figure out a good balance between setting goals for the work in this circles.
My hope is that our Technology CoP group will think about ways we can share out the technology we are doing with our students with the rest of the staff and consider ways to move us, as a whole, forward. My guess is that many people who say they are using technology as only using it for students as “gatherers” of information (ie, kids go to web and copy information) , and not as “creators” of content (ie, making movies, podcasts, etc). I’m going to try to be persistent, without annoying everyone, that this is the direction we should be going — helping students to become “composers” in a digital world through the use of a myriad of technological tools available to us. I may even print out the statement by National Council of Teachers of English that now puts emphasis on multimedia in the Language Arts field.
My worry is that this group will be seen as the place where we talk about what kind of technology we need to buy next — software, hardware, etc. — and while that is important to a degree, I think we have a lot already here at my school. I want to focus on practice, not purchase.
It’s very heartening that our principal is excited about this new technology CoP group and is fully supportive of the concept. He really does believe in bringing teachers along in this direction but also knows that there will be pockets of resistance to technology. I know that, too.
I wonder if you have a similar group at your school or organization? If so, I would love to know how it is going and what advice you might give to us as we move forward on our own baby steps.
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